#sea power

[shirleyvinyard]

[zira-draws]

they have been rotting my brain for a WHOLE year and I CAN'T STAND IT .

[cusn0]

From the sea to the Miku beyond

[kamruna]

had to draw the kittens!!

Electrical Kittens - Sea Power

[aceshighaceslow]

Sea Power were AMAZING and hearing ‘The Great Skua’ live in particular almost made me cry 😭 anyway here’s some ‘Cleaning out the Rooms’ for all you Disco Elysium folks x

[godspeedmajortom]

I’m fascinated by how variations of Sea Power's “Want to Be Free (Remix)” provide a musical theme for death and endings that follows Harry and his foils throughout Disco Elysium.

The first place you hear it is as “The Field Autopsy” while inspecting the Hanged Man’s body. It's barely recognizable as the original song, though. It's sluggish and muddy and bilious. The piano melody has been lowered and sustained to an ominous funereal organ and combined with deep strings. A lilting viola line in the lush layers of the original "Want to Be Free" is isolated here and contrasts with the low organ, rising like the stench off a corpse. If you do the autopsy first thing as Kim suggests, Harry – freshly, grotesquely awakened from his apocalyptic bender – is not in a much better state than a corpse himself.

The music underscores a visceral scene of death and decay, our introduction to the Hanged Man, the first of Harry's foils. Both Harry and Lely are agents of state-sponsored violence as a cop and mercenary, respectively. They bear similar physical scars from the neglect of the systems they grew up in. They both desperately want to escape the horrorshow of their lives, using drugs and dark fantasies to cope with the terrible things they see and do but finding little more than self-destruction in the nihilism. The Bloated Corpse of a Drunk taking the Hanged Man's place in Harry's first night dream makes their connection explicit: you should be dead, Harry. This may as well have been you.

The next place you hear a variant of "Want to Be Free" is in the washerwoman's shack in the fishing village. “Live With Me” is wistful and melancholic. The gentle piano and cooing vocals evoke the wind and waves on the bay, an escape calling outside the salt-rimed shack. But this is a place of death, or at least its potential, as the return of the high viola from "The Field Autopsy" reminds us. This is where Ruby hid when Harry's arrival made her fear for her life, where she contemplated killing herself if things got even worse. This is where Harry can end up if no one vouches for him at the RCM tribunal finale, where his wounds will grow infected without medical care, where there is little left to do but return to drinking and wait to die.

But true to the song title, the shack also offers Harry the possibility of learning to with himself as he emerges from his bender. Here is a mirror free from the damage and trauma of attempting to destroy himself where he can reflect on who he was and who he wants to become. He can choose to keep or let go of his past coping/defense mechanisms like his facial hair and The Expression. He can choose to embrace or reject the self-defeating fantasy of fascism. The shack marks a midpoint of the game, when the hangover has worn off but before the case is closed. So "Live With Me" scores the balance between potential endings: abandonment or acceptance, relapse or recovery, death or life. Harry breathes in the sea air, breathes it back out, and takes another step.

I didn’t realize this until a recent replay, but “Live With Me” also plays when you visit the Working Class Woman to notify her of her husband’s death. Since this is an optional sidequest, I understand why they didn't create original music for it. But they didn't reuse "Rue de Saint-Gislaine", the song for the rest of the Capeside Apartments (including the Smoker on the Balcony's apartment when you talk to the Sunday Friend). The Working Class Husband is another mirror for Harry who has met his end, and "Live With Me" plays to mourn him.

Victor Méjean died from an accident while inebriated, a fate that also could have befallen Harry on a previous drinking binge. The striking thing about Victor's death is how easily he could have been overlooked and forgotten. He died at the end of a pier in a fenced off, abandoned part of town. His wife wasn't concerned about his days-long absence. It's only by virtue of Can Opening and Jamrock Shuffling that Harry will know about or find him. Victor literally and figuratively died slipping through the cracks – of the rotted boardwalk, yes, but also of any sort of social safety net. This is what happens to alcoholics in Revachol. This is what will happen to Harry if he continues drinking and hasn't built his own personal safety net with Kim or Cuno to prevent the RCM from abandoning him. As Harry informs Billie of her husband's death, it's only natural for him to think of his own possible endings, and the soundtrack reflects that.

The final version of the song you hear is “Burn, Baby, Burn” blasting from Sad FM on the boat ride to the Sea Fortress to find the Hanged Man's killer and Harry's last dark reflection: Dros, The Deserter. Dros shares Harry's penchant for clinging to political ideology to give meaning to his life and obsessing over women he can't be with. He lives in bitter isolation, refusing to move beyond the failures of the past, his personal shortcomings and the evils of the world alike. He's emblematic of yet another possible outcome for Harry: not literal death, but despair-induced stagnation that leaves one living like a ghost in the mortal realm.

By the time Harry gets in the boat to the island, his fate at the end of the game is set. The RCM (specifically Jean) has all they need to decide whether to accept or abandon their prodigal lieutenant-yefreitor. Should his former partners leave him, Harry can return to the shack and the circle of drunks who have also given up on life. Or he can return to the island, where he would take Dros' place as the creepy old man haunting the fortress, scaring children, and staring at the mainland with longing and resentment. But even if Harry returns with his unit to Jamrock, simply resuming his old life will not keep him from returning to the depths of despair. The RCM broke him; the RCM will not save him. Neither outcome helps Harry become a person he truly wants to live with.

"Want to be free/It will last forever/Eternally," croons the boombox on the boat. The lyrics echo the self destruction that Harry sought before the game's events: freedom forever from pain, the ultimate release of death. At least that's what the Ancient Reptilian Brain would see in those words. But there's tension in the lyrics as the desire for freedom and exhortations to "burn, baby, burn" repeat. The bridge offers an alternative vision of verdure not consumed by the disco inferno: "And the trees are green and overhanging/Feather-light, free, and everlasting." Perhaps a less moribund future exists for Harry, even if only in the next world, as a new person.

[vintage-lampshade-rule34]

disco elysium ost is wild for putting the whirling-in-rags theme right after one of the most atmospheric and haunting tracks in the game (instrument of surrender). like im crying and then that damn whimsical guitar starts playing.

[notgreengardens]

[infamousjingle-horse]

feeling some kind of way about the cover art of the decline of british sea power (which smallest church in Sussex is off) having the thornton wilder quote about a land of the living and a land of the dead, which finishes “and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” idk idk

[shirleyvinyard]

Workers of the world, unite!

[boowomp]

[guillaumebevy]

Highlight of my evening at my noodle job: hijacking the speakers to play 'Cleaning Out the Rooms' and 'Fire Escape in the Sea' while I wait for/help with closing. Bonus points if its raining. Because then I can pretend I'm the bartender at the Whirling and not [noodle shop name]

[thegildedcentury]

Only The Future Crabs Can Judge Me: Disco Elysium and The Politics of Failure

[cheddar-baby]

This will never stop being hilarious to me.